Tal­ented pair zoom in on un­der­age drink

IN the lead-up to Leavers Week, Jes­sica Kerr and Te­quita McDon­ald have de­liv­ered a pow­er­ful mes­sage to teenagers on the dan­gers of un­der­age drink­ing.

The two Iona Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege stu­dents, who have just fin­ished Year 12, won $3000 from the Li­ons Club of Man­durah for their video in the Stu­dents Ad­vis­ing Youth (SAY) project.

The WA Po­lice ini­tia­tive en­cour­aged groups of stu­dents to re­search the prob­lems with al­co­hol and com­pile a short film to show how they could make their com­mu­nity drugfree and al­co­hol-aware.

Jes­sica and Te­quita’s film fea­tures Jes­sica play­ing the char­ac­ter of al­co­hol and uses that char­ac­ter to dis­cuss the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of un­der­age drink­ing, in­clud­ing dis­con­nec­tion from fam­ily, mem­ory loss and phys­i­cal in­jury.

The al­co­hol per­sona also re­calls some of the ex­pe­ri­ences they have shared with young peo­ple, end­ing with an emo­tional nar­ra­tion of a car accident.

“It as­tounds me that so many peo­ple don’t seem to re­alise that un­der­age drink­ing is il­le­gal,” Jes­sica said.

“It just seems nor­mal for some peo­ple.”

Te­quita said it was im­por­tant to them that they did not triv­i­alise al­co­hol abuse.

“This is stu­dents ex­plain­ing it to other stu­dents,” Te­quita said.

Jes­sica and Te­quita will do­nate $1000 of their prize money to the Nano Nagle Bur­sary fund, which pro­vides fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to a stu­dent who would oth­er­wise not be able to at­tend Iona.